Tag Archives: Gas Planets

Hello there again!!! This week’s post is a little recap on what we did during one of our last sessions where we touched on the topic of gas planets. The gas planets in our solar system are beautiful planets, but how much do we know about them?

First of all, we have 4 gas planets which are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune (personally I like Neptune and Uranus the most :P)

So how do the gas planets come about? Let me tell you a little story about our solar system past…

Well in the very early days of the solar system, there were a lot of gas and dust. Some of those gas and dust form our sun and the remaining materials form a protoplanetary disk around the sun and the whole thing was known as the Solar nebula. Amazing isn’t it? ^^

Now there was an imaginary line called the frost line and any gas beyond the frost line will condense and freeze into icy balls. Our Sun was not what it used to be, in the past our Sun was younger and hotter. So the solar wind from our Sun was stronger and it blew the lighter elements such as Hydrogen and Helium out into the outer solar system. Remember the icy balls we mentioned earlier? Well the elements that got blown out got trapped by the icy balls’ gravity and they start to accumulate around the icy balls until they become……..Gas Planets!!! (Ta-Da) :D

Now that you know where the Gas Planets come from, lets talk about their structure, as you can probably guess, Gas planets are made up of Gas. But they also have a ‘rocky core’ made of rocks, molten metal and ice. The atmosphere of the gas planets extends all the way to the core, so there is no solid ground for you to stand on! 0.0

So you think you know more about the Gas planets? Well do you also know that there are different types of Gas Planets? There is the Traditional Gas Giant which are composed of Hydrogen and Helium and there is the Ice Giant which are composed of ‘ices’ (methane, ammonia, water).

Now we will move on to the Rings! A popular topic I suppose! Not going to be very detailed, just the very basics:

All the Gas Planets in our solar system has rings, not just Saturn. However, Saturn’s rings are the most beautiful and the most obvious because Saturn’s Rings consist of ICE while the other planet’s ones are made up of darker rocks. Since ice reflects more light so Saturn’s rings are the brightest! Do also check out this link where it shows you how it would look like if Earth has Saturn’s Rings (very cool): http://io9.com/if-earth-had-a-ring-like-saturn-508750253

This year is a good year for planet gazing. This year, Saturn’s rings are titled so we can very beautifully observe them from Earth. And if u did not know, this year was the opposition of Mars (not a gas planet but just a little info for u ;) ). If you missed the opposition period, well… wait for the next one lol.

Well that was a mouthful! Thats all folks, we will update you guys again next time! ^^ see you~